Gastric
linitis plastica (LP) is usually found as an advanced
gastric cancer and has a poor prognosis. No sufficiently effective
chemotherapy has been reported. In recent years,
TS-1 has yielded a high response rate for advanced
gastric cancers and favorable treatment results have also been suggested for gastric LP. We retrospectively compared and discussed anti-
tumor effects and survival time for 62 consecutive patients with unresectable gastric LP who underwent
chemotherapy at Kitasato University East Hospital between November 1995 and December 2002. They were divided into two groups: 19 patients given
chemotherapy including
TS-1 as first-line
therapy (TS-1 group), and 43 patients given
chemotherapy mainly with
5-fluorouracil,
cisplatin,
methotrexate and
mitomycin C (non-TS-1 group). The overall response was 57.9% [95% confidence interval (CI) 35.7-80.1%] in the
TS-1 group, which was significantly greater than the 27.9% (95% CI 14.5-41.3%) of the non-TS-1 group (P < 0.01). The median survival time was 402 days (95% CI 251-553 days) in the
TS-1 group, which was also significantly longer than the non-TS-1 group (213 days, 95% CI 165-261 days, P < 0.01).
Neutropenia and
febrile neutropenia of grade 3 or higher were observed in 21.1 and 5.2%, respectively, in the
TS-1 group, which were lower than the values of 37.2 and 20.9% in the non-TS-1 group. We conclude that greater anti-
tumor effects and longer survival time can be expected from
chemotherapy including
TS-1 for gastric LP compared with conventional
chemotherapy.